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Reward and Investigation Tips from Ireland

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

Robert Wechsler

A few days too late for St. Patrick's Day, today's
Irish Examiner has a wonderful story about catching officials
involved in ethical misconduct relating to land use. It's an old
story, but new to me, and probably new to you, as well. The occasion
of the article is the publication of a 3,270-page
report on a number of corrupt acts that occurred back in the
1990s in and around Dublin.

The first notable thing about what occurred was that the facts came
out due to a reward that was offered back in 1995, a £10,000
reward offered by two environmentalists who, according to the
article, "had grown increasingly frustrated at what they saw as
wholesale corruption in the planning process — particularly in the
Dublin area." These two men basically had a Lawrence Lessig moment,
that is, they realized that their policy goals had no chance of
being attained as long as the process was corrupt.

Of course, the reward was for information leading to indictment, not
ethics enforcement, but that is only to be expected where there is
not a good government ethics program.

One man came to them with a story and, although he never actually
sought the reward, he provided the information necessary to
establish the
tribunal that drafted its final report 17 years later.

Although the allegations related primarily to one official, the
taoiseach (the Irish prime minister), who was a close friend of this
official, refused to allow a tribunal focused on him. By allowing
the tribunal to have a broad scope, the taoiseach allowed the tribunal to catch the taoiseach himself.

And by insisting that the tribunal finish its work by Christmas, but
not saying which Christmas, the taoiseach allowed the tribunal to
dig deeper and deeper into the muck of Irish land use corruption.

The morals of the story, then, are:

1. A reward is a good way to get people to come forward (a second
person came forward a couple of years later, that is, a reward's
value can last for a long time).
2. Don't assume that your bluff will work, just because in the past
investigations have always stalled long before conviction.
3. Make your limitations explicit.
4. Since a smarter official would not have created a tribunal or would have made his limitations on its work
explicit, don't let officials have anything to do with ethics
investigations.